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Back into dragon's den for Felicity
By Louise Jury 10.12.07Former Good Life star Felicity Kendal is to return to the West End to continue a run of playing mad and monstrous female "dragons".
After starring in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days - in which she played Winnie buried in sand - and as the overbearing actress Esme in David Hare's Amy's View, she is to play glamorous socialite Florence Lancaster in a revival of Noel Coward's play The Vortex.
Florence is a mother with an insatiable desire for younger men whose own hedonistic son competes for her love.
"I seem to be playing a lot of dragons," said Kendal. "My last three women in the West End have been rather fierce women. But I think fierce women are more interesting, I think writers find them more interesting."
The play, one of Coward's earliest works, caused a scandal when it premiered in 1924 because of its veiled references to drug use and homosexuality.
Kendal, 61, insists it is no longer shocking but she said the issues of family relationships - and what parents can and cannot be held responsible for in their children's lives - were still relevant.
The twice-married actress said she had been "extremely lucky" with her own two sons, now aged 33 and 20.
"We had those teenage moments when they say, 'You know nothing, mother,' and everything wrong is your fault," she said. "Luckily they have grown up to realise it's their life and nothing is my fault."
The actress, who had a highly public relationship with Tom Stoppard, also admitted the idea of choosing a younger lover was alien to her.
She said of Florence: "She is a monster. Usually my sexual objects have been always older ... that's probably the way I'll stay. "I do understand other people feeling like that. It's very invigorating ... you get energy from the younger person." Despite working in theatre since she was nine, Kendal remains best known for The Good Life, the Seventies BBC comedy series which co- starred Richard Briers, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington.
She welcomes the lasting fame it has bought her. "To have been in the business this long and still have people talking about what I've done, whether theatre or television, is a success," she said.
Kendal's other West End work includes succeeding Diana Rigg as another mother figure in Humble Boy.
• The Vortex previews at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, from 20 February. It runs until 7 June.
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